ABSTRACT
The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century saw a shift in the methodology of mathematics. As examples from number theory, geometry, analysis, and algebraic equations came to be seen as special cases of general properties of certain abstract structures, formal definitions, such as those of groups, rings, and fields began to emerge. Questions about the structure and classification of these mathematical objects came to the forefront. Abstract algebra is the discipline that studies such general structures. The name was coined to distinguish it from elementary algebra, which uses variables to represent numbers in computation and reasoning.
